5 Tips For Finding More Time For Your Side Hustles

When you start a new side hustle, you can often start with a burst of energy but start to lose steam as time goes by. I tend to start side hustles that I am mainly passionate about in order to help me keep momentum. One of the most important parts of your side hustle is you have to want to do it. If you don’t really want to do it, it’s going to be like when you were a kid and dragged your feet on your way to whatever class you hated. You’ll get there eventually and maybe you will do ok in the end, but you will dislike every minute of it.

When you launch a successful side hustle, it can help you pay of debt faster, lighten your financial burden so you are not living paycheck to paycheck, to take holidays without dipping into your primary earnings, to retire early, or maybe even quit your 9-5 job. Whatever your reasons for wanting to earn more money, how much you want it can determine how successful you are at it.

Get up earlier

Everyone likes to sleep in. You’re probably tired already. You likely value your Saturday morning sleep-in. But if you want your side hustle to be successful, those wee morning hours is one of the best times to be working. It can be a hard transition at first, but try it out. Start with one hour, just one hour earlier. Then try two! You will be amazed at what you can get done in the early morning hours of the day when everyone else is asleep. The Rock gets up every day at 4am for his workouts because that’s what gives him the edge over his competition. What do you need to do to get shit done? He even has an iOS and Android app to help you: The Rock Clock.

I’m up at 4am daily and puttin’ in the hard work that I already know my competition is not willin’ to do. If they’re willin’ to get up at 4, then you bet your ass I’m gettin’ up at 3. And if they’re willin’ to get up at 3am, then well… I’ll be gettin’ up at 2:59 cause that’s just bullshit. — https://www.instagram.com/p/BE4f6iFIh0H/

Be honest with yourself

Here’s the deal. If you are not honest with yourself, you will set yourself up for failure. If you know that one hour a day spent on your side hustle is realistic, don’t commit to four. If you know your weekdays are jam packed, don’t kid yourself that you will put in 20 hours during the weekdays to work on your project. There are only 24 hours in a day, use them wisely.

Transform your idle time into useful time

Everyone has time throughout their day where you have a gap. Maybe it’s that 30 minutes while commuting to work. Maybe it’s the 15 minutes standing around waiting for the school bus to pickup your kids. Maybe it’s that 5 minute walk between your parking lot and your office. Maybe it’s the 3 minutes you take to brew your morning tea. It doesn’t matter where those idle moments are, they exist throughout your day and these are times you can briefly spend working on your side hustle. If you have a blog, you can be writing out the major points for an article you are going to write. If you have an etsy store, you can be formulating that next great pin for Pinterest. If you are a photographer, you can be planning out that next spectacular photo shoot. Avoid wasting these moments on scrolling through facebook or idly surfing.

Make use of your lunch time

If you have a 9-5 job where you get paid an hour for lunch, you are squandering it if you don’t use it on your side hustle. That’s 5 hours a week! Think of what you can get done in 5 hours for your side hustle. You don’t even have to get up early for this one!

Organization is key

If you don’t have a game plan for your side hustle, you really should make one. Organization and planning will help you stay on task and focus. For my new Etsy store, I have mandated that I create one new product a week. For this blog, it’s to write 3 blog posts a week. If you don’t have organization and planning around things like this, you will fail to deliver. Some successful bloggers have this down to a science in order to reduce writers block and churn while contemplating what to write. So Monday’s you write about subject A, Tuesday’s you write about subject B, Wednesday’s you write about subject C, etc. That way when you sit down to write your blog post on Wednesday, you already know what topic you are writing about. This is something I plan to implement in the near future, because right now, I am all over the place!

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2 thoughts on “5 Tips For Finding More Time For Your Side Hustles”

Kind of a tangent – but I think the most obviously lucrative-right-out-the-door type of side hustle is Uber/Lyft. There’s no ramp-up required and you get immediate pay-outs. The income isn’t high, but it’s as stable as it gets from an “hourly” commitment perspective. So if anyone’s really looking to benefit right-of-the-bat financially (and is extroverted), ride-sharing should be the go-to side hustle. Compare that to a blog, if that’s a serious attempt at an income-generating side hustle, you can spend years and years with very little financial benefit. From a time-saving standpoint, I agree with everything you’ve pointed out. I think a lot of people sleep in way too much on the weekends. And even more than that, the “idle” time really adds up over a week’s time. The YouTube browsing here and there, the daily 1-hour lunches like you mention, etc. All of that adds up to quite a bit of wasted time and fairly significant opportunity costs!

Uber is an interesting one for sure. I think it can be tough to earn good money driving for Uber, but if you are strategic in when you drive (peak hours), you can likely earn some good side income. Financial Samurai chronicled his Uber experience and it is quite interesting. He has a number of articles written on his experience. Financial Samurai. In the sharing economy I think air bnb can be a more lucrative side hustle if you are willing to share your home.